Researchers say spotting growth problems can help to cut the risk of dangerous complications

A Birmingham research team has discovered that spotting growth problems in unborn children could cut the number of stillbirths by 600 each year.

A team of researchers at the West Midlands Perinatal Institute in Birmingham set out to assess the main risk factors associated with stillbirth in a multi-ethnic population.

It found that restricted growth in unborn children is the single largest risk factor.

The
UK has one of the highest stillbirth rates in the developed world – a situation which has not improved over the last two decades.

The
Birmingham study also found that the mother being obese, smoking while pregnant and with a history of mental health problems meant there was a high risk of the unborn child dying.

Using
NHS records, the team identified 92,218 normally-formed single babies, including 389 stillbirths, from 24 weeks of gestation, delivered during 2009-11 (a stillbirth rate of 4.2 per 1,000 births).

They
then assessed several maternal and foetal risk factors for stillbirth and calculated the proportion of stillbirths that could be potentially avoided if these risks were removed.

These
included mother’s age, parity (the number of times she had given birth), body mass index, mental health history, pre-existing diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease, smoking in pregnancy, alcohol consumption and foetal growth problems.

Ethnicity (African, African-Caribbean, Indian and Pakistani) carried a higher risk, as did deprivation and unemployment

As
potentially modifiable risk factors, maternal obesity, smoking in pregnancy and foetal growth restriction together accounted for 56 per cent of all stillbirths.

But
the strongest risk factor was foetal growth restriction, which carried a
four-fold higher risk of stillbirth compared with normal growth pregnancies. This increased to an eight-fold risk if it was not detected
during pregnancy, accounting for 32 per cent of all stillbirths in the study.

The authors said that, despite this, the presence of foetal growth restriction is currently missed in most pregnancies and they estimate that 71 stillbirths in their study population could have been avoided through better antenatal recognition. If applied to the UK population, this would represent 600 fewer stillbirths per year.

A
spokesman for the authors said: “Most normally formed singleton stillbirths are potentially avoidable and preventive strategies need to focus on improving antenatal detection.”